Her Inner Sanctum
by TheYoungTimpani
Summary: A lot can be determined by the state of someone's room; Tony doesn't like the image that Ziva's childhood room represents and tries to alleviate that dislike.


**Disclaimer: **Do you really think that Legend 2 would have ended that way if I owned NCIS?

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**Author's Note: **This idea came to me as I changed my khaki sheets to blue ones on Saturday morning. Beautiful inspiration, no? Basically, Cable_Addict cowrote this with me due to the fact that I have been reduced to a drooling mess incapable of writing anything longer than one chapter. This is a baby step toward writing serious stuff again. I cannot thank you enough Cable_Addict. Forgive me if you do not like it, but I plan on this being several chapters of something that is only a smidgen deeper than fluff.

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Tony and Ziva wandered through the upper level of her father's house as they waited for Eli and Gibbs to leave their meeting in the study downstairs.

Without a thought as to where she was going, Ziva opened the door and walked into her childhood bedroom, Tony followed. She froze upon crossing the threshold; it was exactly as she had left it. Down to the tiniest detail. Her father had simply shut the door and never looked at her room again. She pulled open a drawer and saw that all the clothes were still there just as she had left them almost a decade ago.

Tony stepped around her and looked at the room, "This was yours?"

She nodded and mumbled, "Mm-hmm."

"When did you leave it?" Tony asked.

"I was eighteen."

"An eighteen year old girl decorated her room like this?" he asked incredulously as he inspected the room. Everything was in perfect order. The only posters on the wall were military posters. There were no pictures of friends on the wall, no pictures of family anywhere. The bed was neatly made in military khaki sheets with matching pillows. It was tight and there was nothing on it. Just like a cot in a military barracks. The walls were drab; plain and white. Nothing in the room looked like a teenage girl had lived there. It looked like an army base. Tony hated it.

He went over and opened the closet and a small stuffed dog fell down and hit his head. He looked up and saw a pile of stuffed animals sitting on the top shelf of the closet. He smiled. Tony pulled open a drawer and found bright blue sheets and green pillowcases. He picked them up and walked out of the closet. "Come on, Ziva," he called.

"Tony, what are you doing," she asked in a hollow voice.

"We're changing the sheets," he replied, ripping the khaki sheets from the bed.

"The sheets are clean," she said, not moving.

He unceremoniously dumped a pillow from its case and replied, "Yeah...well...come on."

Without her moving, he changed the sheets and remade the bed with the bright, cheerful sheets. Then stood back and looked. It was starting to look better.

He returned to the closet and came back with his arms full of stuffed toys. He began to arrange them on her bed while she just watched with no expression.

Once he was satisfied, he sat down on the foot of the bed and looked at her, "Zee, what's wrong?"

She shook her head and sat down beside him, "Am I really like this?"

"Like what?"

"This. All of..._this!"_ she shouted motioning around the dreary room.

"No, of course not," he smiled, "You'd like for all of us to think that you are, but you aren't."

She looked at him.

"I know that on the inside, you're much more like...this," he motioned to the bed that he had remade.

She smiled and picked up the dog that had hit Tony, "This is more like how I wish I could be. My father thought that it was time for me to move on. I did not want to disappoint him, so I changed everything about myself...and this room. This room used to be bright blue, Tony! With...pictures of my friends and Tali and Ari on the walls and..." she stood up and walked to one wall, "posters, but not like these posters!" she violently ripped the military poster off of her wall and proceeded to do the same to every other one.

Tony just watched her as she took the posters and crumpled them into tight wads and threw them into the pile with the sheets.

She slid down along the wall and sat there looking at the rest of the room; looking at Tony sitting on her bed. "I wish I could go back to that," she sighed.

He looked her over and stood up and walked over to sit by her, "Well," he thought out loud, the bed's back to normal. Tomorrow we can go buy bright blue paint."

She chuckled, "Yes, because you are going to help me paint," she said sarcastically.

"I am," he assured her.

"You will?" she sounded shocked, "Tony, why would you do that. I've been awful to you recently."

"Yeah...well," he rubbed the back of his neck, "I figured that I had that coming. I know I've told you this before, but Zee, you deserve to be a kid every once in a while...I figure since your first childhood ended in this room, your second one's gonna start here."

She leaned up against his shoulder and grinned, "For once, I think that you've got a great idea."

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**A.N.: **Once again, a gigantic thank you to Cable_Addict.

As a side note, if you haven't ever watched Slumdog Millionaire, I highly recommend it. I love that movie!


End file.
